Thomas Heatherwick revamps his New York flagship for Longchamp – 20 years after he first designed it

When Thomas Heatherwick was tapped to design Longchamp’s New York flagship in 2004, he had one goal: ‘to scoop people in off the street and make them go upstairs.’

To do so, Heatherwick, who was little-known in the US at the time, opted to punch a hole through the building and install an undulating stair made from steel ribbons that seemingly cascaded down the three-storey building like a waterfall. Those strips created what the designer thought of as a ‘hill’ for shoppers to summit, a slope that would usher them into a retail wonderland. The New York Times, in its review of the building, called it a ‘work of art.’

Two decades have elapsed since the opening of that radical flagship, and both Heatherwick Studio and Longchamp have grown. The designer has become one of the world’s best-known creatives for projects ranging from Little Island on Manhattan’s West Side to Coal Drops Yard in London. Longchamp has also evolved, expanding its range of products, delving deeper into sustainability and rethinking traditional retail. It was time for a change in energy.

‘You can buy anything you want online,’ Heatherwick tells Wallpaper*. ‘The hyper-digital has been dominating, and that means you need the hyper-physical.’

His relationship with Lonchamp began in 2003, when he was asked to design a bag for the company. The result was a series of totes and purses that featured a single long zipper that wrapped around the entirety of the bag. Longchamp’s leadership was so impressed that they asked Heatherwick to take on their New York flagship.

‘The space called for something extraordinary,’ remembers Jean Cassegrain, the third-generation CEO of Longchamp.

In the years that followed, it was clear the store needed to be updated to reflect changing customer behaviour and desires. ‘It needed to be adapted to our new ways of doing business and for new ways to welcome customers,’ Cassegrain explains. ‘We didn't want to redo it entirely, and we were not going to go to someone else.’

Heatherwick Studio was back in action – and welcomed the opportunity to re-evaluate the firm’s old ideas. ‘Originally, we were seeing [the store] very much like a theater—it had dark floors and very theatrical lighting,’ Heatherwick explains. ‘The underlying shift [in this version] was moving from a theater set to a Parisian apartment.’

The designers opened up the primary upper-level shopping floor, maintaining a series of original bent plywood forms that peel off the wall to form shelves for bags and accessories, but eliminating some to let in additional light and views. Plush green carpets, custom designed with the French company Lelièvre, swirl in puddles on the floor and creep all the way up the room’s columns like velvety trees. Custom timber displays flaunt silk scarves and small leather goods while vintage furnishings – including a Gio Ponti coffee table and a 1970s ‘croissant’ sofa by Raphaël Raffel – encourage lounging.

Sculpture and ceramics pieces, including works by Dorothée Loriquet, Tanaka Tomomi, and Nitsa Melotopoulos appear throughout the store, in addition to time-worn archival pieces like gameboards and a display model of a leather-clad pipe. ‘We’re less rigid,’ says Cassegrain. ‘We've introduced some randomness, let’s say – elements that are unexpected.’

That original sculptural stair, of course, stayed put, but got a glossy coat of Longchamp’s signature ‘Energy Green’ – a zingy hue inspired by the colour of the turf at the Longchamp Racecourse in Paris. ‘We wanted to make sure it was vivid,’ Heatherwick says. ‘From the street, we needed the feeling of enticement and energy.’

So what does it feel like to return to these formative stomping grounds all these years later?

‘I think maybe I have more confidence to be more eclectic and be a bit looser,’ reflects Heatherwick from his perch on the croissant-shaped couch.

‘I feel proud, not humiliated, to adapt and adjust and breathe new life into it for the next decades.’